Chapter 82
Getting up, I followed her. Her skin was mmy as she ambled to the sink basin to rinse her and brush
her teeth. Leaning on the door frame, I watched her, and she wet her face before wetting the back of her
neck. She stopped beside me when she went to leave, and I stepped aside, letting her pass. By the time
she got back to the bed in front of the firece, her teeth were chattering. Goosebumps covered every
inch of flesh as she huddled beneath the nket.
Lying down, her mind was churning. I could feel it, feel her confusion yet also curiosity but also her fear
of knowing the truth. Her pain writhed through the bond, the cramping, nausea. One thing I am d is
long over and gone for myself. It’s just the initial shift, your body preparing itself. Your first shift always
sticks with you; it is excruciating. Hers made worse by our sabotaged bond.
“It makes no sense,” she murmurs, barely audible even to my ears. I roll on my side, peeling the nket
back. She was bundled in like a human burrito. “What doesn’t?” I ask her.
“If it was true, why would she take me? Why not k**l me?”
“Unfortunately, not everything makes sense, Ivy, and I don’t think I want to make sense of that woman’s
mind; if it made sense, we would be like her if we shared her mindset,” I answer.
Ivy sighs, and her big cerulean blue eyes peer up at me. “And if you’re wrong?”
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“I’m not. I was the first time; I am sure this time, Ivy,” I answer.
“But if you are?”
“Then nothing, you’re still my mate, and you are not your mother,” I tell her. She snuggles down in the
nket, only from her nose up peeking out from the nket.
“My body heat will help regte your temperature. The bond calls for it now. It recognizes me, Ivy. Don’t
suffer just because I was a p***k. You have me and the bond; use it. I won’t force you to do anything
unless you ask me to,” I tell her.
“Why would I ask you too?” she says, like I am absurd.
“The calling, Ivy. I know you don’t like me using it, but there is a reason male Lycans were gifted with it.”
“Yeah, to rape the women,” she says with a roll of her eyes. She was half correct. It is barbaric when you
look at it from that perspective, but not the main reason because it only works on your mate or the
person you marked as your mate.
“I would never rape you. Do you think that little of me?”
“I don’t think much of you when you use it to get what you want,” she says. I sigh.
“It’s not used just for getting you to submit. It helps calm the bond. Calm your bond to me, Ivy. Yes, it can
be used in a sense as an aphrodisiac or calm you, which is my only intention to calm our bond, forge it,” I
tell her. She clicks her tongue, and her eyes flit away. She shudders, and her teeth chatter.
“If you mark me, you would be able to feel me better. Once the bond is forged for Lycans, we can even
get a sense of each other’s thoughts. It goes beyond just feeling each other’s emotions,”
“How so?” she asks.
“I can tell when you’re hurt, like your hand. For example, mine hurt too. I can feel your curiosity to know if
I am right about you being Azalea. Yet your apprehension at also knowing, I can tell that I scare you,” I
admit before swallowing.
“But I haven’t marked you?”
“No, but I have marked you. Once you mark me, there is nothing you would be able to hide from me, Ivy,
I will feel and sense everything when ites to you, but that goes both ways. You will also feel
everything lyrics feel.” If she didn’t mark me, she would be in for a long night, yet I doubt I would
convince her.
“Marking me will strengthen you,” I tell her in ast ditch effort.
“I don’t want strength, Kyson; I am sick of being strong. Sick of biting my tongue, sick of answering to
someone, sick of the mold everyone put me in, I am tired. Strength? Strength isn’t physical; it’s enduring.
Enduring of everything when all you want to do is nothing but crumble and let it go; it bes too
heavy. Abbie and I were each other’s strength, each fighting to hold on for the other; I don’t need
strength, Kyson. I need peace,” she says with an exasperated sigh.
“More than my life?” I whispered to her, and she nodded. I knew it had to have meaning because they
always said it to each other, though I was curious about how it started.
“Yes, nothing means I love you more than my heart is still beating for you; we stopped living for
ourselves. Instead, we lived for each other. You go, I go, so you keep fighting because you can’t bear the
thought of leaving the other behind.” Ivy answers.
“Like a pact?”
“Yes. We made it when we were 15,”
“What happened when you were fifteen?”
“Abbie went missing. She didn’te up from the cer. She was supposed to be cleaning the mop
buckets, so I looked for her. I found her in the cer, her tunic torn, her thighs covered in blood. Abbie
was standing on a chair with a rope around her neck. She wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I knew.
She told me to leave, but I grabbed the other chair and climbed up beside her and loosened the noose,
wrapping it around my neck too.” Ivy answers, her eyes getting a faraway expression like she was
trapped in some memory. The fear through the bond made me clench my jaw. That pack had so much to
answer for.
“I told her more than my life. Mine wasn’t worth living either if she wasn’t in it, that we would go to
together because her life was worth more than mine,”
“And she got down?” I asked, the calling slipping out at her distress, and she lifted her eyes to mine
when it washed over her.
“Helping?” I ask her, and she sighs but nods.
“So obviously, she didn’t k**l herself,” I tell her, wanting to know what happened as much as what I was
hearing sickened me. It was distracting her from the fact she would be shifting.
“No. We both jumped, but the rope didn’t hold our weight,” Ivy said, and my stomach dropped before Ivy
turned her head and lifted her hair. The back of her neck has a scar it was faint, and that spot didn’t grow
any hair through the scar tissue.
“Abbie has a scar behind her left ear where the rope cut into her. Instead of d***h, we both got a
headache when our heads collided.” Ivy chuckled. How she couldugh at something so horrific, like it
was nothing said enough for what those two girls endured.
“And that’s how it started?” I asked. Ivy shrugged.
“Afterward, Mrs. Daley started singing for us to cook dinner. Abbie didn’t want to go up, so I helped clean
her up. I swapped her tunic for mine, and we went to cook dinner.” Ivy says before pulling her face from
the nket so I can see her better.
“I got 12shes for that ruined tunic, but what it cost Abbie was worse, so for her, I wore it. Then we
cooked dinner. We saw Mrs. Daley get paid by the butcher who hurt her. After that, where Abbie went, I
went, where I went, she went, more than my life. If she were to endure it, I would too,” Ivy says.
I needed to get Abbie away from Alpha Kade, but it exined why the pair of them were so close. They
were dependent on each other. I chewed my lip; Mrs. Daley was lucky to be alive. She would never walk
again after theshes she received, yet that was even too kind. She won’t be left breathing when I send
Gannon back for her. And g*d help the butcher when Gannon learns his name.
Silence fell over both of us, yet she didn’t rebuke me using the calling. Yet as the night dragged on and
her pain got worse, she moved closer before letting me under the nket with her. Her legs kicked as
her pain worsened, yet it was taking forever. It wasn’t until the early morning hours that I struggled to
handle seeing her like that as she rolled and turned, trying to getfortable.
“Ivy?” I called to her as she turned over closer to the fire. Her eyes zing brightly like jewels, her pupils
fully dted with a silver hue through them. She groaned, kicking off the nkets, her skin heating, and I
knew she was close to shifting; I would never forget the burning sensation that enveloped beforehand.